State moves to regularise land under affordable housing projects

The government has started the regularisation of parcels of land under the Affordable Housing Project (AHP) to correct the anomalies, two years after the start of the multibillion-dollar project.

Under the new programme, the State is engaging original owners, including counties, national institutions and private players, to agree to change ownership legally by surrendering the title deeds of land across the country.

According to the Affordable Housing Board (AHB), the initiative is geared towards easing the process of issuing sectional title deeds to potential homeowners once they have fully paid the purchase price.

A number of affordable housing projects in various counties started in 2024 are complete, though uptake of the units remains low.

Data from the Ministry of Lands, Public Works, Housing and Urban Development indicates that by May 2027, the board plans to deliver 173,000 affordable housing units that are currently under construction across counties.

The government hurriedly started committing resources accrued from the housing levy to construct houses without valid documents.

The State missed the steps of acquisition as enshrined in the various land legislations- the Land Act, Land Registration Act and Community Land Act and instead started with infrastructure development.  

According to the land legislation, the government ought to have converted the land from original owners – counties and State agencies - but the process was overlooked, with some government operatives citing urgency by then.

The process is likely to open a new opportunity for critics to censure the government for its failure to have fast-tracked the process after conceiving the idea two years ago. 

The majority of civil servants and employees in the private sector and opposition leaders have been opposing the AHP, citing a lack of clarity in terms of the utilisation of the funds and allocation of the completed housing units.

Land regularisation

A technical working group under the AHB said all affordable houses are being built on public land acquired from counties, State corporations and private entities. 

George Arwa, the chairman of the technical working group, confirmed that land acquired for construction of affordable houses was not formally converted before the start of the project.

“Affordable housing projects are being undertaken on public land owned by the national government, counties and other players.  Now, for public land to be converted to private land, various processes need to be followed,” said Arwa during an interview recently in his Ardhi House office.  

"Initially, yes, we made some small mistakes because the conversion of this land is very elaborate and construction of the cheap housing units, being a national agenda, had to be started. So we requested the counties to share with us a list of parcels of land that they think they could give us for the project, which they voluntarily did."

“Some tracts of land where the affordable houses are built have titles, but the majority and especially those from counties, do not have. The government wants to follow the due process of converting the parcels of land and make it easy for termination of the mother title and issuance of sectional title deeds to new homeowners,” he added.

He noted that the AHB is spearheading the process, working with the boards of State corporations and county assemblies to apply the due process of surrendering the parcels of land.

 “We expect 173,000 housing units currently under construction in various counties to be ready by May 2027. Once the process of regularising is over, the AHB will undertake an initiative to geo-reference all the apartments and ensure the owners are presented with sectional title deeds after clearing the purchase price,” he added.

The regularisation process coincides with efforts by other players along the value chain, for example, primary mortgage lenders (PMLs) to increase availability of affordable home loans to Kenyans.

The Kenya Mortgage Refinance Company (KMRC), established in 2028 to provide concessional, fixed, long-term finance to the primary lenders, is rallying Banks and Saccos to transfer the same benefits to citizens, making home loans more accessible to low-income earners in the country.

KMRC Chief Executive Officer Johnstone Oltetia recently, in an interview, confirmed that his organisation has so far onboarded more than 20 PMLs - Cooperative Bank, DTB, HF Group, NCBA, Absa Kenya, Stanbic and Credit Bank, International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Housing in Africa (Shelter Afrique).

Arwa stated that the AHB has automated the entire housing acquisition process to ensure all the data of every potential owner is well captured and makes it easy for the government to have an easy trace of all the units

Land acquisition and geo-referencing process

Arwa, who is also the National Project Coordinator for the Kenya Informal Settlements Improvement Project (KISIP), clarified that land acquisition by the government from any State institution, counties and private entities is elaborate.

The Constitution of Kenya (2010) classifies all land in Kenya under the categories of Public, Community and Private, in accordance with Article 61(2).

The same can be acquired through allocation, transfer, lease, compulsory acquisition, surrender, public-private partnership and reversion of lease.

“The State Department for Housing and Urban Development, in pursuit of its affordable housing programme, has undertaken to acquire land from different parts of the Country for the purpose. However, the three different land holding regimes present different legal process requirements for acquisition and eventual ownership of the land to enable the realisation of the affordable housing agenda,” he noted.

Arwa observed that the process ought to have been followed to fulfil the requirements for land ownership by the State department, depending on the type of land.

Arwa confirmed that a good number of counties that surrendered land to the national government are sceptical of the process, a situation likely to frustrate the legalisation process.

Land under the control of the State firms ought to have been surrendered to the State in the Ministry of Housing after approval by the board. A cabinet memo has already been drawn for submission to the cabinet for further approval.

By December this year, 45,000 housing units will be ready in the market, with the State challenging mortgage primary lenders to develop affordable loan products suitable for interested homeowners.   “Once all the apartments are geo-referenced, personal information of the homeowners, including PIN, ID, payable rate and names will be incorporated into the system,” Arwa observed.

Mortgage financing

During the fifth Kenya Affordable Housing Conference in Naivasha last month, the Principal Secretary for Housing and Urban Development Charles Hinga said Kenya currently has more than 280,000 housing units under construction, representing approximately Sh731.5 billion in contract value and supporting more than 640,000 direct and indirect jobs.

More than 45,000 units are expected to be completed by December at an estimated cost of Sh52 billion.

But Hinga said the number of homes built should not be the ultimate measure of success. “Ownership is not a single door. It should be a corridor with several doors, each opening onto the same outcome,” Hinga said.

Rethinking who qualifies for a mortgage

Traditional mortgage lending has generally favoured borrowers with regular salaries, formal employment records and predictable monthly incomes.

With more than 1.29 million Kenyans registered on Boma Yangu, Hinga said the platform could be integrated with lenders so that prospective homeowners can move more seamlessly from registration and prequalification to allocation, financing and eventually acquisition of title.

“The goal is to move Kenya from approximately 30,000 mortgages towards one million by building not only houses, but the market that places Kenyans inside them,” he said.